The Turning Point in Music and Vision January 18

The Turning Point
GIUSEPPE PENNISI was in eastern Sicily
for the opening night of
Teatro Massimo Bellini's 2012 season:
a low cost but high quality 'Carmen'

Nearly a year ago (in Music & Vision, 18 January 2011, 'Unmistakably Italian') we focused on the Catania Opera House 'Massimo Bellini'. The late Dame Joan Sutherland and her husband, the conductor Richard Bonynge, loved Catania's 'Massimo Bellini' Theatre in eastern Sicily, not only for its elegant façade and its smart auditorium, but also for its perfect acoustics; they considered it such an excellent hall that many of their recordings were produced there (especially a gorgeous edition of Bellini's I Puritani). In the late 1880s, its architect, Carlo Sada (later in charge of designing Buenos Aires' Colón) developed an acoustic miracle where in all series of seats the audience feels literally embraced by the music. It has nearly twelve hundred seats; thus just the right size not to disperse the voices and not to ask the singers for an excessive effort.

The Teatro Massimo Bellini facade. Photo © Giacomo Orlando. Click on the image for higher resolution
This jewel has had ups and downs during the last twenty five years. It is not one of the thirteen centrally subsidized Italian 'national' theatres but a Regional Foundation financed mostly by the cash-strapped Sicilian regional government as well as by limited support from the central Ministry of Culture and by a few private sponsors. Also, Catania's audience has changed: it used to be highly intellectual but, although the city has one of the best universities of Southern Italy, the main focus of the ruling elite is on reviving industry in order to absorb the very high unemployment, especially among the youth. Some twenty years ago, under the guidance of the late Spiros Argiris, the Massimo Bellini had splendid innovative seasons. More recently, due to financial and other problems, the program has been mostly based on standard repertory. Attempts have been made to attract international attention with premieres of forgotten titles -- in January 2011, Gnecchi's Cassandra. Good reviews did not lead to increases in subscriptions or box office sales.

Teatro Massimo Bellini's Hall of Mirrors foyer. Photo © Giacomo Orlando. Click on the image for higher resolution
The new management has devised a different strategy: well-known titles, a limited number of new productions and many revivals. This seems to be working well: a twenty per cent increase in the opera and ballet subscriptions as compared with last year, and a very strong demand for the symphonic and chamber music season. We can only wish the very best to a theatre which well deserves to return to its former glory.

Stage director Vincenzo Pirrotta and the cast, rehearsing for Bizet's 'Carmen' at Teatro Massimo Bellini. Photo © 2012 Giacomo Orlando. Click on the image for higher resolution
Within this overall strategy, Georges Bizet's Carmen was selected as the opera to inaugurate the 2012 season. It is one of the best known and most performed pieces of musical theatre all over the world; in the nineties, a survey by the Metropolitan Opera in New York discovered that Carmen was the 'most favorite' opera of the millions of listeners to the Saturday afternoon live worldwide broadcast. Even if a more recent Metropolitan Opera poll concluded that Mozart's Don Giovanni is the first in the popularity rankings, Carmen is still a good second. The work has not been staged at the Massimo Bellini since 1997; I recall a good performance with Luciana D'Intimo and the then unknown Victor Afanasenko, in a very simple and quite conventional staging by Gilbert Deflo with Marc Soustrot in the pit.

Tatiana Lisnic as Micaela and the chorus in Act I of Bizet's 'Carmen' at Teatro Massimo Bellini. Photo © 2012 Giacomo Orlando. Click on the image for higher resolution
The production seen and heard on 15 January 2012 is totally new. Musically, it includes orchestral accompaniments for the recitatives composed by the well-meaning but rather poor composer Ernest Giraud for the 1875 Vienna performances. This is a must when dealing with an international cast not in a position to master reciting the spoken parts in French. But the production does away with the softening and the embellishments to the orchestration by Giraud. Instead, with Bizet's rather rough original orchestration, the music drama is more powerful.

Rinat Shaham as Carmen and the chorus in Act I of Bizet's 'Carmen' at Teatro Massimo Bellini. Photo © 2012 Giacomo Orlando. Click on the image for higher resolution
In short, the musical direction (by German conductor Will Humburg) is as close as possible to that originally conceived by Bizet before his premature death. Humburg and the orchestra show that Bizet was at the peak of his inventive power and bestowed on this score such a melodic, harmonic and orchestral richness that every number seems to be shaped to perfection. They do not offer the rather conventional reading of Carmen as a precursor of verismo or even of Massenet's literaturoper. Instead, the musical direction shows that expressionism has a tribute to pay to Carmen. This is a point to stress about this specific production.

Rinat Shaham as Carmen, Jorge Pérez as Morales, Vsevolov Grinvov as Don José and the chorus in Act III of Bizet's 'Carmen' at Teatro Massimo Bellini. Photo © 2012 Giacomo Orlando. Click on the image for higher resolution
Humburg works hand-in-hand with the stage director Vincenzo Pirrotta (the sets are signed by Sebastiana Di Gesù, the costumes by Françoise Raybaud). In short, we are in a 'blood and guts drama' but an expressionistic rather than a realistic one, where the personalities of the singers, and especially those of the four principals, overwhelm all the other soloists, the double chorus and the large orchestra.

Rinat Shaham as Carmen and Vsevolov Grinvov as Don José in Act I of Bizet's 'Carmen' at Teatro Massimo Bellini. Photo © 2012 Giacomo Orlando. Click on the image for higher resolution
It is a low cost but a very effective staging. The sets are merely background drops where lighting shows the mood and the tint of the score. Tables are the only props; for example, in the final scene, the tables are assembled as the Plaza de Toros walls. Acting is very well designed with a lot of sensuality and Mediterranean colors, even Mafia rituals when José joins the bandits.

A scene from Act III of Bizet's 'Carmen' at Teatro Massimo Bellini. Photo © 2012 Giacomo Orlando. Click on the image for higher resolution
The Israeli mezzo Rinat Shahan, as Carmen, is a cat on a hot tin roof like the protagonist of a well known Tennessee Williams play. I had heard her in the same role in Rome at the Teatro dell'Opera some six years ago, before her triumphant Carmen at the Glyndebourne Festival. She was a superb actress, but the large size of the theatre (eighteen hundred seats) and the not such good acoustics did not give justice to her voice, especially to her abilities to descend from the heights to tonalities as low as those normally written for an alto.

Rinat Shaham as Carmen and Vsevolov Grinvov as Don José in Act III of Bizet's 'Carmen' at Teatro Massimo Bellini. Photo © 2012 Giacomo Orlando. Click on the image for higher resolution
The young brigadier Don José is Vsevolod Grivnov; he comes from the school of St Petersburg's Mariinsky, and in Italy he was recently appreciated at La Scala as Lensky in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. He is a lyric tenor more than a dramatic 'spinto'; thus he excels in the more melodic numbers but has difficulties when the texture should be close to dramatic verismo. His legato is especially good. The vibrant cat on the hot tin roof cannot -- we know -- be happy only with the tender José. She is also attracted by the toreador Escamillo, Homero Pérez-Miranda, a very manly Spanish baritone.

Tatiana Lisnic as Micaela and Vsevolov Grinvov as Don José in Act I of Bizet's 'Carmen' at Teatro Massimo Bellini. Photo © 2012 Giacomo Orlando. Click on the image for higher resolution
The sweet Micaela comes from Moldavia: Tatiana Lisnic, already well known in Germany as a coloratura lyric soprano. Almost all the other soloists are Italians. The chorus was directed by Tiziana Carlini, and the children's chorus by Elisa Poidomani. Altogether, good team work.

A scene from Act IV of Bizet's 'Carmen' at Teatro Massimo Bellini. Photo © 2012 Giacomo Orlando. Click on the image for higher resolution
The audience appreciated the musical aspects but apparently expected a colossal and folkloristic Carmen in the Zeffirelli style -- not at all in line with current budgets. Some of the spectators could not really grasp this innovative and exemplary production which hopefully will travel within Italy and abroad.
Copyright © 18 January 2012 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

GEORGES BIZET
CARMEN
ITALY
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